2. Skylar #2
He doesn’t look at me again, but I find myself staring at him .
Studying his weathered boots and tanned calves to the subtle strength in his stance.
He’s not built like Jack, or covered in ink like Sol, but everything about him screams masculinity and it taps into a part of me I’ve used too often to escape.
A part of me I’ve tried to tame for the sake of the good people I’ve let it hurt.
And this bloke, he’s not making it easy.
He shifts, stretching a little. The subtle arch of his neck calls to me and I have to look away, fixating instead on the last bead of condensation running down my beer bottle. On the low growl my stomach emits and how much it hurts—how much I like the pain and I really fucking shouldn’t.
I’ve been here for hours. Surely it’s morning?
I don’t want to glance at the windows and find out.
For many reasons, but the starkest is I’m almost scared to drag my gaze over the man next to me again.
To let that spark in my blood become something real, even if I’m dead set to walk away from it.
But I’m not like Sol who can tell the time by instinct alone, and I’ve been caught in my thoughts too long to guess.
Days could’ve passed. Weeks. And I suddenly need out of this bar as much as I needed to be here in the first place.
A dull headache blooms in my temples, one I’ve earned—one I deserve for the strain I’ve put on my body since Sol handed me an innocuous envelope last week.
I roll from my stool and return my phone to my pocket.
The bar sways a little, but I’m used to it.
I plant my feet on the floor and my balance holds.
Or does it?
A warm hand— that hand—grazes my elbow. “Easy now.”
He thinks I’m drunk. And I suppose it’s better than the truth. All the same, I step back from his touch even as my body begs me to move closer.
I leave it at that.
I leave him , and go outside, hyper-aware of the few seconds it takes him to follow me into the perfect summer morning. Sunshine and a cool sea breeze. The kind of morning that reminds me why I stay when the love and friendship, the family , I have at home doesn’t feel like enough.
It is enough .
I know that. I know it. But I’m not there yet. Not until I sit at the most fucked-up table of them all and give a piece of my soul away.
The man from the bar fills the space beside me. I feel him on every inch of my skin and tug my hood up to shut him out.
He chuckles. “Let’s take a walk.”
From a stranger, it should sound like a threat, but I’ve been around enough lethal men to gauge his motivation.
Concern.
Protection.
Maybe even something else, and the longer I’m awake and destructively hungry, the more I want that.
The more I crave it.
And so we walk, along the sea front, in silence that doesn’t feel as oppressive as the eerie quiet I’ve forced on myself. The tide is out, leaving the beach dimpled and still, and only the seagulls disturb the peace.
We make it to the sheltered rocks before the man stops and lights a cigarette. He takes a drag, frowning at the smouldering cherry before he offers it to me.
I don’t smoke. Not often, anyway, but the temptation of something he’s touched proves too much.
His frown deepens as I take it. “You don’t seem the type.”
“To smoke?”
“Maybe.”
I lean against a rock, the rough surface digging into my back. His response doesn’t make much sense, but I’m okay with that.
The cigarette passes between us. I shouldn’t enjoy it as much as I do.
I should go . Get in my car and make the two-hour drive to Falfield.
But I keep smoking. Keep watching him smoke, transfixed by the flex of his forearm as he brings the cigarette to his mouth. By the curve of his lips as he exhales.
His gaze drops to my mouth too, and I wonder if he’s strayed from the welfare check this started as. If he’s thinking about pressing me up against these rocks.
If he’d let me do it to him.
Like he hears my unchecked thoughts, the man shifts.
Not closer, but it feels that way and I contemplate why he was in that bar when he’s no more drunk than I am.
It’s a hook-up joint, in rural fucking Cornwall.
A hook-up joint for men . That’s why it’s open all night.
And why I’ve been there before, but I barely recall any of it while I stare at him and he stares at me.
It’s as though nothing else has ever existed, and I like that.
I need it.
He ashes the cigarette. An invisible string seems to reel him in and I feel the heat of his tanned skin against mine even though he stops a foot away from where I slouch against the rocks, green eyes heavier than before, a faint smirk building on his lips.
I feel a pull in my gut and it’s enough to hitch the breath in my lungs.
I straighten, weak for the craving seeping into my blood.
He sees and takes another small step, the question dancing in his eyes—like he knows there are a dozen places in this fucked-up town we can go to make this happen. Like he’s been here before too.
But it’s me who closes the distance between us.
Me who takes that slow breath, scenting more than the smoke we’ve shared.
He smells of cedar-wood and the cleanest air. He smells like the earth—he smells like a man, and I can’t stop the tremor of heat that licks through me. I don’t want to. Because I need my head to spin for a better reason than the ones that followed me here.
His fingers brush my wrist, grazing the narrow strip of bare skin he finds there, the space between us razor-thin now. “You seem like you’re thinking a lot.”
We’re so close his breath feathers my ear, but somehow his voice feels distant. As though I’m not ready for it, and I never will be, because this is all we’ll have.
But still I answer him. “I’m not thinking at all.”
“That good or bad?”
I shrug and tilt my head—he’s taller than me. And it shouldn’t matter. I don’t kiss random hook-ups. I haven’t kissed anyone since I broke my ex’s sweet heart, and a stranger on the beach isn’t a good place to change that.
And yet…
His mouth calls to me, and it sends another spark sizzling through my veins. We press together, his hard body against mine, his hand rough and warm as it slides along my jaw, his worn t-shirt soft to my fingers as I tug him closer .
It’s a bad idea, the worst. I feel the rocks grind my spine before it happens, his breath hot on my lips, and I know it’s a mistake.
These faceless hook-ups, they always are.
But I let it happen and heady anticipation drives the air from my lungs, my blood rushing south to where his pooled the moment we collided.
He braces a hand on the rock by my head, searching my face for consent, and I’m half a second from claiming his mouth.
From taking him by the hand and yanking him headlong into reckless oblivion?—
A phone buzzes.
His, not mine. It buzzes twice, three times, and frustration growls low in his throat as he rips the device from his pocket. “Fucking thing. Fucking Jack.”
Jack .
I startle, as if I’m hearing his voice for the first time. The accent—the stretched vowels and rolled consonants. The subtle lilt belying a timbre deep enough that it belongs in another world, another life.
It’s different to what I know. And yet it’s the same, and his green eyes are suddenly so familiar to me I rear back, my skull hitting the rock behind me, a bang to the head I clearly need.
Fuck.
Fuck .
I duck beneath the golden-brown arm caging me, putting space between us so fast the man— you know his name —forgets his phone and his face folds into concern again. “What’s wrong?”
“Who’s Jack?”
He arches a brow. “Not my fucking boyfriend, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I laugh, reality biting hard now I’m not in the thrall of his sinful mouth. “Who is he?”
His gaze flickers, slowly, assessing me like I’m an unexploded bomb. “Why do you need to know?”
Warning laces his tone. Aggression. I sense that strength in him again, more than I did when his chest was pressed to mine, and if he’s who I think he is, he can probably kill me with a flick of his wrist. “What’s your name?”
“Tell me yours,” he counters.
For a weighted second, nothing happens. We don’t speak.
We don’t move, and that current between us?
It should fade—it should’ve fizzled out the moment my brain rebooted.
But it doesn’t and I can’t draw a breath.
I can’t find the words to tell him who I am and the loaded silence becomes something awful.
I close my eyes, restraint shaking my bones as the man draws near again.
“Hey.” He sets a careful hand on my shoulder. “I don’t know what’s spooked you, but my name’s Mal, if that helps.”
It doesn’t.
I laugh again and force myself to face him. “I know.”
“Aye, you do?” Wariness creeps back into that sage green stare. “How’s that?”
“Because I live with your brother.”
Shock replaces suspicion, and it’s his turn, Mal’s , to reel back and force a chasm of space between us. He exhales sharply, bringing both hands to his head, messing his already dishevelled hair. His expression wars between amusement and regret, and something else I don’t want to dwell on.
He tips his gaze to the sky and I take my moment.
I’m gone .
And I don’t look back, even when I reach my car. I just drive, the respite he’s given me shattered by an incoming storm far more dangerous than wind and rain.
Time moves too fast again.
I blink and I’m somewhere else. But it’s not the rowdy pub where I live—where Mal lives too. It’s not the cramped living room that’s already too small for three grown men, or the kitchen I’ve made my own personal battleground.
It’s a grey car park. A pink and beige building that’s almost cheerful if you look at it with eyes that aren’t mine. It’s heavy gates and clanging locks. A scratched table, the smell of bleach, and the face of someone I’ll hate until the day I die.
“ Sky .” She reaches for me. “My baby boy.”
I lean as far back as I can without falling off my fucking chair, my mouth thick with words she doesn’t deserve, but I say them anyway. “Hi Mum.”